


Don't Be Fooled! SanSan's Ending Was Exquisitely Beautiful.

by deviatehardorgohome



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, GRRM came through for you, Your sorrow will transform into sorrow of an entirely different kind, fan essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 23:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18838753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deviatehardorgohome/pseuds/deviatehardorgohome
Summary: Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark's story ended as a painful but magnificent romance. It underscored the key themes of ASOIAF, and they are not bleak. But you'd be forgiven for missing it. Don't believe me? Read it!





	Don't Be Fooled! SanSan's Ending Was Exquisitely Beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fan essay, not a fan fic, because it's not fictional. Hopefully you will forgive me for putting it here. If you read all the way through and believe I'm wrong, let me know! I dare you all!
> 
> Go here to read my brief synopsis on other major characters, and how they all fall into the theme of "Protecting Children from the Cycle of Trauma" : https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/154628-asoiafs-overall-theme-the-protection-of-children-starting-with-sandors-arc-and-his-threefold-death-i-will-show-it-to-you/
> 
> Note I didn't use the term "Sansosity" there, because I wanted them to take me seriously. (But it's always Sansosity in my heart).
> 
> EDIT: I GIVE OPEN PERMISSION TO REPOST THIS ESSAY ANYWHERE, SO LONG AS IT REMAINS COMPLETE.  
> I don't care about being credited. If you do link, please link to the westeros.org forum thread above where there's more details.

Sandor Clegane was a true knight. He did not die two times, but THREE times. And his story illuminates the core theme of the entire ASOIAF.

 

I am alarmed to see that so many people seemed to be interpreting Sandor and Sansa's characater arcs, and indeed ASOIAF's thematic core, in entirely the wrong way.

I know because I did it myself very briefly. This is my realisation:

You cannot  _fully_  understand Sansa's and Arya's story and character without understanding Sandor's story and character.

 

The characters of Sansa and Sandor are  _heavily_  obscured, from the reader, from other characters in the story, and even somewhat from themselves, intentionally so. Their stories both concern people who struggle to reveal themselves to the world, and in that fashion,  _they are just as hard to understand as such a person would be in real life_. They both have a surface interpretation, and a deep interpretation.

And by understanding Sandor's story, and then understanding Sansa's story, you can understand the primal theme of ASOIAF. What I mean by this is that while ASOIAF has many, many different themes, most of them only affect certain characters. It appears like a spiderweb where no single strand hits every single story arc or major character. But this is not true.

ASOIAF is a story about the need to protect children, and the consequences of failing to do so. 

The purest character is Sam: He protected a child no-one else thought worthy of protecting. The worst is probably Cersei, who protected her own children only to protect herself.

If children are not protected when they are innocent, and then given tools to transition from innocence to adulthood, they are forced to find their own means to survive when trauma inevitably happens to them. And this trauma and means of survival _replicate themselves on the next generation of children_  and on and on, until someone protects a child to break the cycle.

And moresoe, it is a story where the pivoting question of good or evil is not what you did to protect yourself or others, _but whether you enjoyed it_.

 

  
**S** o, first to understand this let me explain Sandor's story, as that has been my "Rosetta Stone".

I'm going to make my claims, and you may at first think "Where the hell are you getting that from?" but please read through the reasoning of each claim, then tell me where it doesn't hold up. 

  
** Who is Sandor Clegane? **

Sandor Clegane was born a true knight, but was terribly wounded in the deepest part of his psyche; not just by his brother, but by the  _failure of others to protect him from his brother_  nor to protect his true heart and philosophy from being broken by this fact. Sandor is the male counterpart to Sansa. Their names are not a coincidence. They share a core essence, and for brevity's sake, I am going to call this "Sansosity".

Sansosity = Dreamers. Idealists. Poets. Dancers. Lovers of love itself. Hopes. Songs and stories. Faith. Romantics. 

Everything, in other words, that is weak and apparently entirely disproved and degraded by ASOIAF.

The other parallel between them is that  _nobody ever properly protects either of them._

\+ Ned kills her protection in Lady, and he only ever gave her pleasant truths (Compared to Sandor, who only gave her unpleasant truths). Following that, she rejects her fathers protection, putting her in further danger and leading to his death when he keeps trying to protect her as a prisoner. He didn't TELL her that there was danger or that she needed to be protected at all. This was faulty protection.

\+ Tyrion protects her a bit, out of his general principles, but he also is massively enabling his family to hurt her in the first place. Their wedding night shows this; he “protects” her from himself- his own doing. She knows it is not true protection. 

\+ To an even greater and grosser extent, Littlefinger only protects her from danger he explicitly creates. Like he tried to “protect” Cat from a threat that wasn’t real. This illusion of true protection both confuses and jades Sansa.

\+ When she finds Jon, he does not protect her. She has to return to littlefinger for protection from Ramsay (dunno how that plays out in the books). Bran does not protect her - he explicitly tells her he watched her suffer but could do nothing. Arya actively threatens her. She still loves them and they her, but it is a love entirely cold.

Her fans wanted her to finally find a defender and happiness, but she never did. This fact reveals that her story maps against Sandor's quite well in this regard.

  
**N** ow back to Sandor. Due to his wounds, Sandor becomes the Hound, who is the male counterpart to Arya.

As others have pointed out, the Hound's namesake was probably the Irish legendary hero Cú Chulainn - Chulainn's Hound - a warrior who became so berserk and furious in battle he could not be recognised by his friends. The Hound and Arya's shared essence = Righteous Anger. Hatred of evil. Warriors. Destroyers. Murderers. Remorseless pursuit of revenge.

 

 

** What's the point of him? **

  
So, why is he in the story, and why is he a clean 50/50 mirror image of the two Stark sisters?

Simply put, Sandor Clegane is Sansa and Arya's joint Nissa Nissa, and they each kill their own half.

He dies for BOTH of them, at BOTH of their hands, and each time he does so WILLINGLY. Then he dies a final and third time at his own hands.

  
Let me begin by inserting his symbolic imagery and outlining his story from the start:

  * The Hound was the knight from Bran's vision, who, when he opened his visor to speak, was hollow inside. His threats and insults were empty; he did not sincerely mean them. All that spilled out from him was bile, poisonous cynicism and hatred, and it spilled over the girls he tried to protect.
  * The Hound is also the blind dog from the Ayrie, who tried to protect Sansa, but was too weak and crippled to do so. Who nevertheless comforted her and sought comfort in her, and whom  _she wished was Lady_. She understood, at this point, that the Hound _had wanted_  to protect her, but been unable to, and she wished he had not failed her.



His personal trauma fed his terrible hatred and cynicism, and he spread this trauma to both girls unintentionally as he tried to protect them. This is a consequence of he, as a child, not being protected properly. His tools of survival were crude and brutal, and they hurt anyone who got close to him, even if he didn't want to.

And he didn't want to hurt them. So, what he did to try and stop hurting them was to  _fight and defeat himself_. He had to overcome his own trauma to allow this, and as we see in the greater story, very few characters managed to overcome their own trauma. He was one of the few. 

 

First, the Hound was killed, because the Hound had hurt Sansa. Arya killed him.

Then, Sandor was killed, because Sandor was  _still_  hurting Sansa. Sansa did this.

Finally, Sandor Clegane and the Hound in body were killed, at his own hand, because he needed to do so to rid the world of the cause of his pain, which had caused him to hurt Sansa.  
(And he also didn't want to hurt Arya, but I don't think he really hurt her to any degree like he did Sansa, and Sansa was his primary motivation at all times.)

 

  
** Connection with Sansa **

We start with him with Sansa, and the Hound is ascendant. The presence of Sansa rekindled the Sansosity inside him. It re-wounded him through the Hound's shield, and caused the Hound to become even more savage and cruel in defense. But at the same time, Sandor was interacting with her too.

The Hound was responsible for everything he said to her, but Sandor was responsible for everything he did to her.

The Hound terrified her, but Sandor attracted her. Sansa and Sandor are like two magnets with rapidly switching polarities, attracting and repelling each other with frightening speed and intensity, such that both were overwhelmed and confused by it. Critically though, this is why their story had to start with Sansa being so young. Any much older and her inability to figure out what was going on would have been more unrealistic. As we see, she DOES figure out what was going on, but too late. When we see her increasing understanding of his love, her memories of him become increasingly embellished and romantic. Sansa regularly "edits" her memories to make them less painful and more in line with her emotional understanding of the event. Unfortunately this can't be shown in the show, so their story is even more difficult to see there.

What's important about this delay between him displaying his love and her understanding it, is that he was gone before he shed the Hound, so she only knew him as the Hound. Additionally, because their interaction occurred while she was still a child, it forms part of her core childhood experiences and trauma, which, again, very few people can overcome. Sansa is not one of them. She finally "accepts" his love, and cherishes it closely, but what's important to understand is that  _she accepts the Hound's love_.

But prior to that, she rejects the Hound's protection, so he leaves. She invoked Lady just before he offered it, and this invocation was for a protector who possessed Sansosity. The Hound did not possess enough for her, so even though he responded to her cry for help, she was too repulsed by the ugliness of his philosophy to accept. When he left, he ripped off and discarded his cloak. This was obviously done in delirium, because that could have gotten her in extreme trouble. To have the cloak of a grown man and traitor found in her rooms? He wasn't fully aware of what he was doing. He was "blind" to what he was doing to her, and he also believed she would never love him, so had no expectation she would trust his advice. 

 

** The Hound's Cloak **

The Hound's cloak was the shield between Sandor and the world. It was his determination to cut off his own emotions, never expect or accept love from anyone, never give it out, and protect himself, because no-one else would do it for him.

The "bile" that poured onto Sansa from his mouth was the instructions for this self-annihilating survival strategy. When she rejected his physical protection, he gave her as a "parting gift" the psychic protection he himself had used, and the only protection he knew. In other words,  _he spread his trauma onto her_. He poisoned her with his bile.

But he had nothing else to give her. He gave her everything he was capable of giving at the time.

In the Blackwater, we saw him physically discard his cloak, and her physically take shelter under it. But she didn't accept and don it until much later, when all her hopes were depleted. The summer silks she kept it under were her hopes. She didn't want to have to wear it, and crucially,  _he didn't want her to wear it either._

But she did.

Side note: People may say that this scene at the Blackwater was omitted from the show, so it can't have been that important. But the show did in fact include a scene of the Hound's offer of marital protection. After Joffrey has Sansa stripped, and Tyrion intervenes, the Hound practically leaps forward to cover her with his cloak. The shot frames the two of them, as she looks up in acceptance, framing the two with prisms of light reflected through stained glass. Just as prisms of light are reflected onto marrying couples in Westeros. Then, as Tyrion offers her a somewhat open offer of help, she rejects him coldly. _Under the Hound's cloak, her resolve is iron. She protects herself._

 

  
** Connection with Arya **

We then see him with Arya, the Hound, already wounded by Sansa, falters under Arya's offensive. It's extremely clear that he didn't kidnap and protect Arya for the money, nor for her own sake initially. He kept her because she provided a link to Sansa for him. First, he hoped a real tangible link, by getting him in with the Northerners as ransom. But even after her family died, he kept her because Arya and Sansa had the same family genesis. Whatever similarities he could see between Sansa and Arya were a clear indication of their underlying values. Whatever differences he could see provided a highlight of what was unique to Sansa on top of that; the Sansosity. By looking at Arya, he saw Sansa in greater clarity.

But by looking at Arya, he also saw himself in greater clarity. Because Sansa was who he was born as, but Arya was who he had become. Seeing the differences and similarities between them forced a separation between his own two halves. Arya's anger, hatred and violence were not motivated by contempt for humanity, loss of faith and rejection of love like  _he believed his were_. They were motivated by a desire to defend the values, ideals and virtues she had been raised on. He could begin to see how the Hound had formed around Sandor's core. What's more, he wanted to protect Arya from becoming more like him. The only way to do so was to let Sandor reach through the Hound and touch her; let her see that a pure core could become degraded and corrupted. Her parent's values were not defense enough against suffering his fate. She had to become self-aware.

Arya is not a self-aware character by any means. Unlike Sansa, who spends most of her time in internal repose - some of it self-clarifying and some self-obscuring - Arya almost never indulges in self-reflection. As a result, she hates her own nature when seen from the outside. Her hatred of the Hound was formed extremely early, when he killed her young friend. But she herself killed a young boy in her first act of murder. And she never once reflects on this fact, that she committed the same crime she wants to kill him for. The only part of the Hound she can connect with is the Sansa half. When someone who is so much like her exhibits that Sansosity, she realises it is comforting, compelling, and she does not have to reject it to remain herself. 

Her hatred of the Hound continues to dismantle that portion of him, and he allows this willingly, for two reasons:

 **F** irst is because he believes it is bringing him closer to his own Sansosity, and thus Sansa, his true desire.

 **S** econd is because he can see now how the Hound's attributes in Arya are hurting her, and he wants to protect her from them. He can only do so by effectively bearing his own wounds to her. Show her how the Hound is simply armour over a heart, so she can recognise her own armour as distinct from her heart.

Eventually, her refusal to show him mercy and her rebuke of him not being a true knight slays the Hound. His first death.

 

  
** After the Rebirth **

When he emerges from his period of healing, Sandor is ascendant, though the Hound's mannerisms linger. (He did live most of his life as the Hound, after all.) Sandor and Arya now have a close and personal connection; Arya loves Sandor as a friend now that he has shed the Hound. 

Sandor also believes he understands what he did wrong with Sansa: He approached her, wanting things from her, trying to access her Sansosity without permission, in whatever way he could. Doing so hurt her, and she wouldn't accept his protection. This time, he believes, he will simply protect her from afar, never approaching, never asking. He can protect her without hurting her, and this will bring peace and satisfaction to his Sansosity.

The above can be inferred from the fact that when they unite in the same place again, we see him never speak to her or try to be physically close with her. But we  _know_  he desires her and wants to be with her. So why does he not act on this or even display it in any way? The best explanation is what I have outlined. 

Now let's move forward to when they do finally interact.

 

  
** The Second Death **

Why did Sansa wait so long to speak to him? The surface answer is that their interaction simply wasn't important enough to the story to be squeezed in before then.  **This is an intentional** **obfuscation**. Why would she wait so long?

Even at the end, it is in her nature to thank people, coldly, for what they have done for her. And she must know by now what he has done for her sister, too. If she has no lingering sentiment towards him, positive or negative, she would simply do that and then not speak again.

If she hated him, it makes sense she would wait until after the undead were defeated, so as to use his sword against them. But then she would only approach him to accuse, and probably tell him to get lost.

Let's also remember that she is now a practised manipulator, and is more effective the better she knows what someone wants.

And she knows what the Hound wants.

People are interpreting his "only one thing would make me happy" to mean his brother's death. But look at the context: Another woman goes before her, and he drives her off. Sansa sits down, and he allows it meekly. 

She asks what would make him happy, and he gets  _angry and defensive_.

Come on!  _Sansa knows he wants his brother dead and she knows what his brother did to him, because HE TOLD HER_. (In the books, but it applies here too) If this was what he wanted, he would just repeat it to her. Instead he gets emotional. We all know what he wants, and Sansa knows it too.

Because she's known it for a while now, and she wouldn't even have to give it to him to get him to dance on her strings. If young Sansa had realised what was happening and left with him at the Blackwater, she could have made him carry her on his shoulders all the way to Riverrun, or Winterfell, or wherever she liked. She could have called him Stranger and fed him carrots, and he would have enjoyed every second of it. He's a fattened, dimwitted duck with a crossbow pointed at it's forehead, sitting there looking stupidly at it. Sansa can see this expression on his dumb duck face. ("Men do stupid things for women.") Why would she pass up this opportunity to gain a loyal servant?

Instead, she approaches and simply... waits.

 

 **T** ake a look at her during this scene. At this point in the story she always appears like a fortress, like she has become Winterfell itself. (Which perhaps she metaphorically has) The castle made of ice that Littlefinger helped her to build. He did this by both giving her techniques to protect herself, and also by continually hurting her, so she was forced to use them. Her chain necklace, I originally thought symbolished Littlefinger's "leash" on her. But it remains after his death; It is Sansa's own chain on herself. But even more than usual though, when she sits opposite the Hound, she has an almost inhuman control and rigidity. She looks like a very feminine bulwark. She expresses  _nothing_. And she just sits, and waits for  _him_  to act. 

Consider also the setting: a crowded, loud tavern environment. Tons of people around. But nobody could hear what they are saying. He cannot touch her or do anything to her, if he was inclined to. She has chosen what she views as the safest possible area to meet him, and she "surveys" him first as well. 

 

**_Sansa feels threatened by him._ **

 

_Sansa is on full alert, total lockdown, all-stations-manned defense against him._

But she also willingly confronts him. If she's so afraid of him, why not just get her people to eject him from the premises? She's in power now, and he has no power at all. If she's afraid but wants to keep his sword around, why not keep avoiding him?

 

And why wait until after the undead are defeated? 

 _Because_  she is afraid of him.  _Because_  she knew she needed to be as strong as possible during that ordeal, and she could not afford to risk any damage whatsoever before then by speaking to him sooner.

And really, why is she afraid of him at all? The surface interpretation would be that she knows the Hound hurts her feelings, and she's protecting herself from that.

 

Sure enough, his first remarks are judgemental (You have changed), but like the judgemental remarks he made to Arya, they were not meant as insults but as attempts to help her see the route she had taken, so she could backtrack it, like he had. His second remark lets her know that he knows what she has been through, and is a typical barb from the Hound. So, although he grieves the loss of her innocence, he understands exactly how and why it happened. 

Yet both times, she has  **zero**  response in her armour. They ping off her like nerf bullets against a tank. Child's play.

But then he reminds her that he gave her the opportunity to avoid it all. Probably this is fuelled by some lingering resentment still that she rejected him, but he obviously  _knows_  why she did it. He's not trying to find out why she made the choice she did. Partially, he is also letting her know that he is here to protect her now. He makes his claim with such emotion at the end that it's clear he still feels the desire to protect her.

 

_This breaks Sansa's defense, and it breaks it dramatically for who she is now._

 

 **Sandor is the giant who comes trampling through her carefully constructed ice castle** , not even knowing what he's doing, all "Hurf durf imma giant", breaking through her glacial stronghold as though it was a snow fort.

It is  _not_  Littlefinger's head that she rips off in a fit of rage and stakes on her battlements.

_**It is Sandor's head.** _

 

 

  
** Why?: **

Sansa's pain is too great to suffer this intrusion into her heart. 

Both Sandor and Arya, in building their mental fortifications, were able to use violence, force, and inspiring fear in others as defenses. These were available early in their lives, and were effective as both offense and defense.

But Sansa didn't have this option. Sandor does not realise, that the damage to a completely vulnerable person, is much greater than the damage to one who has some ability to fight back. Her ice castle is taller, it's walls are thicker, it's paths more treacherous. Sansa had no offensive capabilities. She had to build a monumental defensive structure to compensate.

Yet despite the tenacity of her construction, which has held against so many other, mortally dangerous threats, Sansa is terrified of Sandor.

And rightly so. 

Because he busts through her defenses without even knowing what he's doing. When he reminds her that he could have saved her from all her suffering, saved her hopes and dreams, provided her with the love she always wanted (even if she never returned it), maybe even let her see her family again before they all (including her probably) died, she breaks.

She doesn't fear the Hound's cruelty. She fears Sandor's kindness.

 

  
** Draw back a bit here: **

  
In the show, it is indicated that she is sexually mutilated like Theon. She tells LF that she can always feel what Ramsay did in her body. She is shown eating soup with Theon, a food for invalids, while everyone else is in bed with lovers. Whatever her damage is, she cannot tolerate being with a man physically any longer. This is part of her overlap with Jeyne Poole. Jeyne's fate symbolised Sansa's own: The Hound saved her life, but didn't take her out of danger properly. So Littlefinger was able to snatch her up and destroy her life again. In the books, Sansa's damage will likely be only mental and emotional, but the impact will be the same:

She will. not. tolerate. love.

Hoping for love caused her pain. Believing people loved her - Joffrey, Petyr, Willas, etc. - caused her pain. Sandor threatens to make her love again. 

 

Sansa panics. Sansa rebuilds her defenses, even stronger than before, to expel this threat. Perhaps, Sansa even knowingly wounds him to drive him away.

She reaches out to him, touches him. An intimate connection that he is unprepared for.

Then she tells him she is almost happy he did not protect her. She is happy the little bird died. She's happy with who she now is. Strong enough to defend herself. Strong enough to defend others. And she tells him that he provided her with this.

He DID protect her. The Hound loved her, and so she trusted in his words and advice. The Hound offered his cloak to Sansa, and Sansa accepted it. 

 

She married the Hound; she warged into his skin; she took over the castle he had vacated and rebuilt it as her own.

 

He did this to her.

 

Now, without this protection, she probably would have died. If she had remained naive and not been given good instructions on how to protect herself from Littlefinger, she would probably have slipped up, failed in her schemes, fallen for LF's lies, or even just been overcome with depression as she had after her father's death, and let herself die. The Hound did save her life, but at the cost of her heart.

  
**And this realisation murders Sandor Clegane**. She, in her castle of ice, slays him.

 

He loved her heart. He hated the Hound, and he let Arya kill it. And now he comes back to the woman he loves, prepared to defend her selflessly, and she tells him he has already killed her. He gave her the knife, **he told her where her heart was** , and then abandoned her, so she had no choice but to push it in. 

She doesn't want him, and refuses to love him. She loves the Hound, who protected her in a way no-one else ever did, including Sandor himself.

  
And his heart shatters.

His few remaining hopes of being able to watch and love her from afar turn into ash. He realises he can't avoid hurting her. Because he hadn't thought she had any fondness, any trust or love or belief, in the Hound. He was totally blind to the possibility she could have had it. But she did. He caused her to love him by offering her the only selfless love she ever had after her family's death and removal, but she loved him as she had known him: as the Hound, his poisonous side.

He had spread the trauma that enveloped him onto her; spread his disease. Now, even his presence with her was causing her mental anguish, as he reminded her of what she had potentially lost.

He could not co-exist with her without hurting her.

So he stopped wanting to exist.

 

And Sandor Clegane died.

 

 

\----------------------

The next time we see him after this - on the surface - unremarkable scene, he is ready to die. Why would he have come all this way, and then just decide to go kill something that's not even his brother anymore, and that Drogon could have easily taken care of? If he wants revenge so badly, why does he instead seem so resigned?

Not having any reason or desire to live any longer, he returns south to finish the last unfinished thread of his life. He doesn't really care about his revenge. He just wants to know Gregor is in the ground. His brother ruined him, and in turn he ruined Sansa. The last thing he can do is purge the world of the cause of it all. To kill him, he has to accept being burned once more, the final triumph against his childhood trauma. What's notable is that Gregor did not cause his death, even by mortal wounding. Sandor killed himself to kill Gregor.

  
_Sandor dies consumed by fire. Sansa lives, buried under ice._

 

 

  
**B** ut wait! Even if Sandor was Sansa's Nissa Nissa, how was he Arya's as well? Surely that doesn't make any difference to Sansa's story?

It's actually pivotal to it.

The strategy of personal defense that Sansa adopts from the Hound aligns with Arya's own personality and temperament. Sansa begins to understand how Arya sees the world; how Arya operates, not in a conscious fashion but a practical, actively lived one. As she fell in love with the Hound, she connected with Arya, in just the same way that as Arya fell in (platonic) love with Sandor, she connected with Sansa. Each Stark sister killed the half of him that she originally aligned with, and each bonded with the half of him that the other aligned with. 

Arya kills her half of this man to reach Sansa's half. And Sansa kills  _her_  half of this man to reach Arya's half.

  
What Sandor possibly did not know, was that while he failed to protect Sansa and Arya sufficiently, and even caused Sansa damage, he actually protected them in an extremely profound way, which enabled both of them to survive.

He protected their love for each other.

 

As their initial reciprocal contempt and life circumstances pulled them apart, there was ample gaps between them for Littlefinger to try and insert his knives. The Hound  _himself_ was one of the things that they fought over in the first book, with Sansa being extremely defensive of someone who has threatened to kill her and she knows has killed another child, when you think about it. The existing friction between them is aggravated and pried open by Littlefinger in another attempt to isolate Sansa completely, forcing her to be reliant on him, as she previously had been.

But the two sisters overcame his attempts, and killed him together. 

How were they able to understand and trust and love each other, when they had never done so as children, and someone was actively forcing them apart?

 

Because Sandor Clegane had been their spirit conduit. 

 

He had given each sister the chance to love the aspect of the other, and understand the ways it was superior to her own, as well as the ways it was inferior. He let each of them "kill herself" and embrace the other.

He let them do this, despite the pain it caused him, despite having to fight through his own immense trauma to do so.

Driven only by love for the two of them, never having experienced any love from either of them as he did it, he sacrificed everything for them. 

He died first by Arya's hand, for Arya.

He died secondly by Sansa's hand, for Sansa.

And he died third and finally by his own hand, for himself. 

That was the sum totality of his life.

 

  
** The Threefold Death **

His death is a threefold death. There's two types of this death. One is a person who "dies" in three ways at one moment (say, stabbing, hanging, drowning). Another is a person who has three separate death moments, which is the kind he has.

Here is some discussion of this topic from Encyclopedia Of Indo-European Culture (https://archive.org/stream/EncyclopediaOfIndoEuropeanCulture/Encyclopedia_of_Indo-European_Culture_djvu.txt). I have clipped out some bits and added my own emphasis.

 

>  
> 
> The “Sins of the Warrior” is an important IE theme... In this theme a warrior-hero figure   
>  commits three sins or delicts against each of the three   
>  functions, that is, he serially violates one or more of the   
>  bundle of rules that define and govern these functions. 
> 
> The clearest example of these three sins is contained in   
>  the legend of Starkadr ... Starkadr’s three sins are regicide, a cowardly flight from   
>  battle, and another regicide committed for money.
> 
>  

Obviously Sandor's story is not following these rules fully, but he *does* make a cowardly flight from battle. He also kills a child, which is the major sin (and I believe major theme) in ASOIAF. I haven't given it enough thought to see if he has a third obvious sin. But the parallels here are clear.

A warrior commits sins and must atone for them in a threefold death. Furthermore:

 

 

> ...the Norse-Germanic deity OcMnn-Wotan, a First   
>  Function divinity on the dark, uncontrolled or Varunaic side   
>  of this divided function, is called hangagod, god of the hanged'   
>  or the ‘hanging god’; indeed, the Norse Havamal says that   
>  Odinn hanged or sacrificed himself, ‘myself to myself,’...

So killing oneself *for* oneself can be part of a threefold death

 

>  
> 
> Hanging or suspension “above" or “in the   
>  air” (or falling) is clearly marked with FI characteristics. 
> 
> + 
> 
> This triple-death theme spreads downward or   
>  outward from royal or heroic legend, and is widely current in   
>  the folklore of IE-speakers; here snakebite (a “piercing” and   
>  poisoning) is often tied to hanging or to a fatal fall...
> 
>  

And Sandor dies by falling.

 

 

>  ...we would expect some sort of sword-   
>  death or a death by means of some other kind of warriors   
>  weapon, and hints of this are found in the Northern   
>  (Germanic) traditions... the Icelandic Eyrbyggja saga   
>  mentions blood-sacrifice to Forr. 

His death for Arya could be seen as blood sacrifice.

 

 

> According to the Roman   
>  observer Lucan (first century AD) the Celts sacrificed victims   
>  to Taranis, one of their war-gods, in another way: they seem   
>  to dedicate their F2 victims by fire rather than by the sword

Another similarity, as he died by fire. Finally and most importantly:

 

>  
> 
> Also, and this quite recently in English history, 
> 
> the crime of treason — a grievous offense against sovereignty —   
>  was punished by what can be read as a trifunctional punish-   
>  ment: hanging, drawing and quartering involved suspension,   
>  the cutting or piercing of the victim, and mutilation of the   
>  genitalia. 

His fall with Gregor parallels a hanging.

His wound in the vital part of his thigh parallels a quartering.

And his wound to his heart and desire for love parallels a castration.

 

 

** Conclusion: **

  
This was a romance between two people who did not reveal themselves to the world, or even explicitly to each other. Even when young, Sansa did not always speak her true opinions - she spoke what she thought she should say. But Sandor could see her behind that, and eventually, when she was old and wise enough, Sansa could see Sandor behind his obscuring words as well.

Their story is similarly obscured; hidden; only able to intuited by hints. 

Despite being a heavily obscured part of Sansa's story, it is actually critical to understanding her story properly. Although the Hound was only a portion of Sansa's story, and a smaller portion of Arya's, Sandor's story itself was entirely dependant on Sansa's. If the story threads and arcs of ASOIAF were arranged in astral orbits, such that each Stark sibling was a planet orbiting the story of house Stark, and that story was part of the galaxy that orbited the story of the seven kingdoms and so on, Sandor's story was a moon to Sansa's planet. 

Although her story has a fair portion independent from his, his story is the cypher to unravel her details. Though he is himself not straightforward to decypher.

 

Without this understanding, Sansa's story appears to be a cold, entirely heartless mockery of the belief in true love, in true knights, in stories and songs. It is gloomy, depressing, and an undeserving fate for a girl who never hurt anybody, and never was provided proper protection.

 

**But with his cypher, her story is illuminated:**

**She had her true knight.**

**She had her true love.**

**He loved her exactly as a knight should; from afar, with chastity, without reward.**

**And it is a song of heart-strangling romance, where every note of the traditional romantic score is struck, in an almost imperceptible, ultrasonic tone.**

 

It mirrors what we know of the story of Florian and Jonquil; a fool and knight who fell in love with a lady, who was menaced by some monster, and ended in flames.

He fought and defeated Littlefinger not by ever confronting him, or even knowing he was the true danger Sansa faced. He defeated him by loving Sansa, loving her sister, giving Sansa the strength to kill the monster herself.

And though neither of them had a happily ever after, he gave Sansa maybe the happiest possible end she could have in the brutal winter of Westeros.


End file.
